The present invention relates to a feeding and delivery structure for a cutform medium (e.g., a single sheet or film) for use with a printer having an automatic feeder for cutform medira.
A conventional device, disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 63-53091 and as shown in FIG. 4 of the present application, has a cutform medium fed by an automatic feeder 101 disposed upstream of a platen 105, and conveyed by the platen and pressing rollers 106, 107. The cutform medium is printed by a printing head los opposed to the platen 105, delivered upwardly by delivery rollers 109, 110 and stored in a stacker 111. Such a printer is suitable for successive (e.g., continuous) processing of cutform media. However, when a single cutform medium different from those stored in the automatic feeder 101 is to be processed, the processing and handling thereof is troublesome. To eliminate this inconvenience, a sheet passage 112 for manual feeding and a manual feed guide 102 have been provided.
However, in the conventional feeding and delivery structure, the manual feed guide 102 for the cutform medium also serves as a rear face of the stacker adapted to store the cutform medium having been printed by the print head 108, and is located on the same plane as the printed cutform medium. Thus, a problem arises in that, if the cutform medium has a tendency to roll-up, a tip 104a of the cutform medium is rolled into the sheet passage 112 due to a rear or trailing end of the cutform medium remaining in the sheet passage.
Another problem in the conventional feeding and delivery structure is that the surface of the delivered cutform medium 104 is brought into contact with the rear face of the stacker. Therefore, when the cutform medium is electrostatically charged in a low humidity environment, the attraction of the cutform medium 104 to the stacker face increases. Hence, a comparatively thin cutform medium is buckled due to a force couple generated by the conveying force of the delivery rollers 109, 110 (e.g., indicated by arrow a in FIG. 4) and the carrying load on the rear face of the stacker (e.g., as indicated by arrow b), and cannot be properly conveyed by the delivery roller 109.